CANCUN: This unique resort city on Mexico's east coast combines high-profile larger-than-life
This unique resort city on Mexico's east coast combines high-profile larger-than-life luxury with traditional Mexican hospitality. Currency is the Mexican peso (though dollars are accepted everywhere) and the official language is Spanish (but making your point in English is rarely a problem). Cancun can be great fun!
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Miles of spectacular beachfront hotels with wide circular driveways, high open air lobbies, verdant tropical gardens, towering straw palapas, elaborate fountains, spacious pools and waterfalls rambling over manicured lawns characterize the crowning jewel of the Mexican Caribbean, which was carved from dense jungle for tourism.
Everything state-of-the art has been combined with Mexican culture. Modern shopping malls loom near clusters of simple Mexican market stalls. A Mariachi band plays a soft serenade several feet from the entrance to a discotheque with a mind-boggling sound and light spectacle. Elegant international gourmet restaurants are found on the same block with tiny tortilla stands.
Mexican folklore, art and music mix freely with modern resort life to the delight of vacationers who prefer destinations in vivid technicolor with stereophonic sound. And there's excellent shopping, too.
A few hours away, the scene changes -- to awe-inspiring Mayan ruins at Tulum and Chichen Itza, snapper "veracruzana" cooked on makeshift grills and served with ice cold beer on white hot beaches near Playa Del Carmen, to sleepy afternoons of sunning and snorkeling at Island Mujeres or cooling off on an inner-tube excursion through Xel-Ha, a popular new water park.
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